Chapter XXII: What Nat Saw

“Nat’s got a fit!” yelled Andy Hale, giving vent to the first thought that flashed into his mind when he saw the other carrying on so wildly.

“More likely the wild man tackled him!” cried Peg Fosdick.

“Whee! hold on to him then, Nat! Don’t let him get away!” Eddie Grant admonished, while Clint Babbett added to the din by adding:

“We’re right here, Nat, ready to help you! Sic him, Nat. Get a strangle hold on the ferocious burglar!”

Suddenly Nat stopped whirling about so furiously. He even managed to poke his tousled head from under the folds of his blanket, and seemed to squint cautiously about him, much as a tortoise does after an alarm.

“Is _it_ gone?” he demanded, faintly, as though short of breath.

“What ails you, Nat?” asked Dick.

“Been having an attack of the nightmare, I reckon, and dreamed he saw something as big as a house and as ugly as Bill Biddon’s bulldog!” snapped Dan Fenwick, with a perceptible sneer in his voice.

It was noticed that neither Alonzo Crane nor Dit Hennesy uttered a single word. Apparently they knew Nat would not act in this way simply after having had a silly dream. Both of them had been in his company that afternoon in the woods of Bass Island when Nat claimed to have seen the unknown monster that was haunting their camp.

“Say, what d’you take me for, anyway?” demanded Nat, as he crawled out of the tangled folds of his blanket, and looked defiantly around him. “I tell you I’ve seen a terror of the woods all right, and I only hope never to set eyes on the same again. If I had my way I’d start for Cliffwood to-morrow. I didn’t come up here to have Old Nick, or something just as bad, play leap-frog over me, I want you to know.”

Some of the boys could be heard muttering to themselves. Plainly these strange words on the part of Nat gave them cause for worry.

“Tell us all about it, Nat, won’t you?” pleaded Alonzo, who was looking rather white under the eyes, Dick noticed--a plain indication of a craven spirit, boys are always ready to avow.

“Oh! I’m willing to tell all I know,” replied the other, readily enough, “even if ’tisn’t much. When a feller gets waked up all of a sudden like, and sees such a thing hoppin’ right over him, he’s not agoin’ to stop and take too long a look. I own up I ducked under the blanket right away, and started rollin’ around, meanin’, of course, to keep _it_ from grabbin’ hold of me.”

“What was it like, Nat?” asked Dick, while Mr. Holwell stood by an interested listener, a puzzled expression on his kindly face. Mr. Bartlett and the physical director were also on hand, while a black face thrust out from the cook tent told that Sunny Jim was listening.

“Oh! say, when I try to tell you I just seem to get all balled up,” complained the boy who had been the cause of the midnight alarm.

“But you can give us some idea,” persisted Dick. “Already you’ve gone and compared it to Satan himself. Did he have a forked tail and cloven hoofs?”

Nat failed to catch the satire in Dick’s question and voice.

“I shouldn’t be ’tall surprised if it did,” he calmly replied, “though I don’t want to exactly say I _seen_ all that. But I give you my honest word, cross my heart, if it didn’t look like it must a come from down below. Ugh! but it certainly gimme a bad feelin’.”

“Must have thought they’d sent for you, on account of some of the fierce things you’d done in the past, eh, Nat?” quizzed Peg, boldly, for he knew the bully of Cliffwood was in no frame of mind to take offense just then, and pick a quarrel.

“Never you mind what I thought, Peg Fosdick!” said the other, still trembling. “If you’d had the same experience I did, I reckon your nerves’d a been shaky too.”

“Which way did it seem to go after jumping over you, Nat?” asked Dick, bent on extracting all the information possible from the alarmed one while the incident was still fresh in his memory. Later on he would be apt to become hazy about particulars, and even contradict himself it might be.

“Shucks! as if I bothered much takin’ any notice of such foolish little things as that,” replied Nat. “The only thing I do recollect was that it hopped over me comin’ from the left side. So I rolled the other way, you see.”

“And you lay down with your head toward the north, didn’t you, Nat?” came from Leslie, who realized that Dick was trying his best to get hold of some sort of clue, though really it did not appear to matter much.

“Here’s the way I was lyin’, so you can figure it out for yourselves,” said the other, throwing himself down for a moment, and then regaining his feet to continue his tale.

“But you want to understand that I’m done sleepin’ out here alone after this. I ain’t hankerin’ about bein’ waked up to find things like that playin’ leap-frog over me.”

He picked up his blanket with an air of determination that could not be mistaken. Dick understood from this that Nat must have been pretty badly frightened by his sudden awakening, and what he claimed to have seen.

These things aroused in Dick’s mind a greater determination than ever to learn the answer to the puzzle before leaving Bass Island. When the morning came one of the first things he meant to devote his attention to was searching for a clue to the character of the unknown terror.

It was not very pleasant standing around in the chilly night air, and lightly clad at that, so when Mr. Bartlett suggested that they turn in again no one offered any objection.

If the unknown creature that had taken to haunting Russabaga Camp came again between midnight and the break of day no one was any the wiser for his visit. With the first streaks of early dawn there were signs of activity about the camp, and one by one the boys began to make their appearance.

There was a chill in the air on this morning, making it quite different from several preceding ones, and many of the boys were seen to shiver when indulging in the usual morning dip.

But it would have to be something wonderful that could hinder those amazing appetites of theirs from gripping them. Every one seemed anxious to have a hand in assisting Sunny Jim in getting breakfast, until Mr. Bartlett was compelled to call half a dozen of the boys away.

“‘Too many cooks spoil the broth,’” he told them. “You’re only hindering Jim when you hang around that way. Some of you swing the axe, and cut more firewood. It disappears mighty fast, you notice. Others can fetch the blankets out and fasten them on the lines for their morning airing.”

In the end breakfast was announced. The main dish on this morning consisted of fried slices of home-cured ham and fresh eggs turned over in the skillets. There was besides plenty of boiled hominy, of the fine variety which in the South goes by the name of “grits.” To finish up with all the pan-cakes were provided that any boy could swallow. They were, however, called “flap-jacks” by the campers, it being understood that a heavy fine or penalty awaited the one who dared designate them as “griddle-cakes,” “pan-cakes,” or “flannel-cakes.” That would make them feel as if they were eating at home, with a white table-cloth and china in evidence, instead of off in the wilds far from the busy haunts of men.

There were some other “haunts” apparently, that bothered several of the boys considerably, Nat in particular. He had not recovered from his shock of the preceding night, nor could any of the other boys find it in their hearts to blame him very much.

Nat Silmore had always been known as a bully, afraid, in fact, of nothing that walked on two legs; and to hear him candidly admitting that he was genuinely disposed to quit the camp on account of his anxieties gave several of the boys a feeling of real alarm.

Dick managed to get Leslie aside after they had finished breakfast, though most of the others still lingered at the table. In fact some of them could not find the heart to get up so long as a single “flap-jack” remained.

“What do you think of it?” Dick asked his best chum.

“I have to jump at conclusions when you fire that question right at me,” replied Leslie, with a broad smile; “so I reckon you must mean about the thing Nat saw, or _thought_ he saw last night.”

“Well, I’ve been turning it all over in my mind,” continued Dick, frankly, “and have come to the conclusion that he must have seen something. Nat isn’t a timid chap by any means, as every one knows; and if you watch him right now you’ll notice how he keeps looking to the right and left all the while he eats. He’s half expecting to have something jump out at him.”

“That’s right, as sure as you live,” admitted Leslie. “If things keep on like this much longer, Dick, our camping trip will be spoiled. Why, none of the fellows will care to wander into the woods, and before we came they had laid out all sorts of schemes that would take them there.”

“Yes, I know they had planned to explore every foot of Bass Island,” said Dick, moodily. “They’re beginning to care only for going out on the water.”

“Humph! a good reason why,” grunted Leslie. “That mysterious wild man can’t get them out there, it seems. Yes, just as you say it threatens to upset all our jolly plans. What’s got to be done about it, Dick? I’m ready to try anything you say.”

Dick scratched his head as if in deep thought.

“Well,” he remarked, finally, “of course one of the first things I did this morning was to get down on my hands and knees and examine the ground where Nat says he was sleeping when he woke up to see something jump over him.”

“And did you make any discovery worth while, Dick?”

A shake of the head answered this question even before Dick could frame words to reply.

“Why, no, I can’t say I did,” he went on to say. “The fact of the matter is the ground was so well tramped over that there couldn’t be any way of finding the footprints of the wild man, even if he did hop over Nat as he lay there. I had to give up in the end, and call it a bad job.”

“I’m sorry for that,” said Leslie, who apparently had begun to indulge in the hope that his clever friend might have come upon a clue.

“But there’s another chance for us,” ventured Dick.

“To find a track, you mean, do you?” questioned Leslie, taking fresh courage.

“Why, somehow or other,” Dick explained, “none of us thought to look closely into that trap of Dan’s which was smashed by the wild man the other night. Now, let’s the two of us slip away as soon as the morning service is over without telling any one what’s in the wind. We can prowl around there, and see if some sort of sign is to be picked up that will give us the clue we want.”

As soon as the religious service, which was held every morning after breakfast, was over, Dick whispered to his chum:

“Let’s be moving, Leslie, while the crowd is still sitting around. Mr. Holwell seems to be telling them one of his stories about his experiences. Every little while something that happens seems to stir up his memory. He’s seen a heap of queer things in his day.” Accordingly, the pair walked away unnoticed by any of their comrades.